The intentions of making my own pesto sauce from scratch was certainly there, but something silly like I-killed-my-basil-plant got in the way of my plans. There’s nothing more sad than walking out to my mini-garden and seeing a sad, shriveled and shrunken herb.

Oh poor little thing! You had such potential!

I have a feeling that the mint got a bit jealous and decided the only way to win would be to overgrow and squeeze the poor little basil out. Bad mint! If it wasn’t for Sparkling Ginger Lime and Mint Cooler, I would surely punish by pruning.

So, off to the grocery store I went to buy enough fresh basil to make a batch of pesto.

That is, until I saw the price of fresh herbs at the market.

$3.99 for a small pathetic pinch of basil stems? That’s such a rip-off! Because I can grow herbs pretty much year round here in Florida (during the hot hot summers, the herbs grow on my covered lanai) I can’t remember the last time I bought fresh basil.

Too cheap to spend the money on enough basil to make pesto, I opted for plucking the 4 remaining leaves from my sad plant and bought a jar of prepared basil (same aisle as pasta sauce). Not quite the same as homemade, but cheap, satisfying and I ended up creating a 15 minute appetizer with a pre-baked naan flatbread, a package of Japanese Brown Beech Mushrooms (from client Hokto) and a half an onion in the refrigerator.

It’s the quickest gourmet-y appetizer ever and I love using naan flatbreads as the base. It’s pre-baked, which is a fantastic shortcut for when I don’t have time to roll out my own pizza dough. Naan is Indian-style flatbread, normally baked in a clay oven (though I doubt these commercials ones are) and I’m just in love with the irregular teardrop shapes. You can substitute with pita bread, double-stacked flour tortillas) if you can’t find naan.

The mushrooms are flexible too. I’m using brown beech mushrooms, but sub with any type of fresh mushroom you’d like.

And hey, if you’ve got better luck with basil than I have (just remember to keep the jealous mint plant away from the basil), feel free to make your home made pesto.

Kids Pizza Racers Recipe

Have your mom turn the oven to 375F. Go get steak knife, and take out the insides of the hot dog bun. Cut a little spot for the pretzel steering wheel. Now you have to get a spoon and put a little bit of the
pizza sauce inside the bun, then four pepperoni slices and then some shredded cheese. You can spoon a little more sauce on top. Have your mom put it in the oven for 5 minutes until the cheese is melted.

Mom will take it from the oven and it’s really hot so you have to leave it alone for a bit. But now it’s time to make the wheels. Get a cucumber circle and poke it with a stick pretzel. You have to make all the wheels. When the racer car won’t burn you, poke the cucumber wheels into the buns. Then put the curly pretzel in the spot for the steering wheel.

Today I spent a half hour at one of my kids’ favorite Italian restaurants called Gio’s. It’s run by four of the hottest brothers in town. Like SERIOUSLY HOT. All of them. But that’s not the reason why we went there. I write a monthly column for a small community paper and listed some of my favorite eateries in town. Gio’s was one of them, because my kids’ like their pizza. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with the hotness factor of four brothers.

Anyways, it took about 10 minutes of click-click-click to get the perfect food photography shot.

Wait. It was more like click-repositiontomato-click-drizzleoliveoil-click-morecheese-click – food photography interspersed with food styling. By the way, I scheduled the photoshoot appointment with the Gio brothers when the restaurant was empty. Don’t ever be rude and try to do this in midst of your dinner and every one else’s dinner.

I’ve created a nifty slideshow with commentary on the food styling and photography. See how I got from this:

Food Styling Notes

Yes, so this was a 10 minute photoshoot. I didn’t have to make the pizza, nor did I have to slice any of the ingredients, but just a few adjustments to ingredients and placement …well the RIGHT ingredients totally transformed this photo. Just quick food styling.

It needed texture, contrast, and sheen. It needed spices (black pepper) and herbs (basil) so that YOU could look at the photo and instantly imagine how it tastes. The texture came from overlapping the tomato and the mozz. More texture came from the basil – both whole leaves and julienned. See how the basil drapes over the ingredients? In a photo that close (macro) the black pepper and grated parm added nubs of texture too. Olive oil added the sheen and moist factor. I took away distracting elements (pizza pan and the pedestal stand)

My food photography lighting? Free. Came from the big window. I just chose a table right next to the window. Can you tell where the window is?

Well, I hope you enjoy the food styling and food photography notes that I take – I know I get lots of emails from readers asking for more information on food styling and photography! What do you think…is this helpful?

Steamy Kitchen New Web Design

Oh, do you like the new design? Long story short – traffic too high for current shared hosting server. Had to move asap. WordPress theme didn’t work on new server. Needed to customize new theme in 24 hours.

Whew.

I still have a lot of work to do – but at least it’s functional. And yeah, I know my thumbnails are not there….it has to do with my photos being hosted at Flickr and not on my hosting server. If I had one advice to give to beginner bloggers – DO NOT LET FLICKR HOST YOUR PHOTOS. I swear, it’s a pain in the ass.

p.s. Flickr, I’m sorry. I love you. Please don’t be mad. You still have all my food and family photos stored there at your house, so don’t be pissed off and do something stupid like throw my photos out the window. I didn’t mean what I wrote.

]]>http://steamykitchen.com/2431-photoshoot.html/feed46No Knead Pizza Dough: Pear and Gorgonzola Flatbread with Baby Arugula and Shaved Parmesanhttp://steamykitchen.com/274-no-knead-pizza-dough-pear-and-gorgonzola-flatbread-with-baby-arugula-and-shaved-parmesan.html
http://steamykitchen.com/274-no-knead-pizza-dough-pear-and-gorgonzola-flatbread-with-baby-arugula-and-shaved-parmesan.html#commentsTue, 19 Feb 2008 05:29:00 +0000http://steamykitchen.com/blog/2008/02/19/no-knead-pizza-dough-pear-and-gorgonzola-flatbread-with-baby-arugula-and-shaved-parmesan/Before we had children, my husband and I used to eat out no fewer than 3 times a week. Our evenings wouldn't even start until Seinfeld ended, and it wouldn't be uncommon for us to have dinner reservations at 10pm. We'd easily spend $300 in an evening for just the two of us...

Opportunity Cost…Revised…

I’ve written about opportunity cost of eating out last year, and re-wrote the post with a brand new recipe for my newspaper food column this week…

Before we had children, my husband and I used to eat out no fewer than 3 times a week. Our evenings wouldn’t even start until Seinfeld ended, and it wouldn’t be uncommon for us to have dinner reservations at 10pm. We’d easily spend $300 in an evening for just the two of us, because that’s just the kind of thing that irresponsible yuppies living large during the dot-com boom did. I’m not ashamed of the thousands of dollars that we threw in the entertainment bucket, because short of stumbling upon a long lost millionaire father, this kind of lavishness won’t come around for another 15 years, 4 months and 27 days. And that’s only if my youngest graduates high school on time.

I love my 2 chubby-cheeked dumplings very much, but the truth is, the financial responsibilities of parenthood suck. Date night with husband is now a very different reality. It’s the expense of dinner plus gas plus cost of babysitter. Cha-ching! $190 is easily spent in just a few hours, and really, was the trio of fancy flatbreads, gelato, so-so service and 2 glasses of house wine really worth it?

In case you recall high school economics, let’s calculate my opportunity cost: For $190 I could have bought: each kid a pair of new sneakers, 2 killer shredded pork burritos from the Burrito Stand, a frozen CPK barbeque chicken pizza, a pair of summer flip flops for each of us, a quart of pistachio gelato, fresh roasted coffee beans shipped from Caffe Roma in SF, a trip to the library, giant bottle of Bariani olive oil, a week’s supply of organic vegetables from the farmer’s market, gummy bear vitamins, 2 McDonald’s Happy Meals, a day pass to Sarasota’s Jungle Gardens and a bucket of worms. These are all favorite things that we cherish, make us giggle with delight and gladly fork over hard-earned money for.

As for the fancy flatbreads that I had ordered at the restaurant, it was easily duplicated at home. Sure, I didn’t have an inattentive waiter at my beck and call, but the joy of a spontaneous pizza dough sling-fest in the middle of the kitchen with the kids was definitely priceless.

This dough recipe is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, definitely the most used book in the Steamy household in 2008! You don’t have to make the dough yourself – if you’re short on time, grab some fresh pizza dough from your supermarket or favorite pizzeria.

If you haven’t bought this book, grab it now! It’s been on backorder forever due to it’s popularity and finally the book is in stock! This No-Knead Pizza Dough is just one of over 100 recipes (all dough recipes are No-Knead). Best part of the dough is that you can make a batch, keep in refrigerator for up to 2 weeks and pinch off a chunk of dough for a spontaneous flatbread. The ingredients for flatbread can be as simple as a brush of olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt.

No Knead Pizza Dough (Olive Oil Dough Master Recipe)

My notes: I love the flavor of the dough when it has the chance to chill out in the fridge at least overnight. I also use only half the yeast – the longer you let it sit in the fridge, the less yeast you need to use. So, if I’m looking to make the flatbread same day as I make the dough, I use the full 1 1/2 tbl yeast. If I am making the dough and letting it hang in the fridge, I’ll only use half the yeast. Half the yeast will be sufficient when you give it time to do it’s thing, and it will taste less “yeasty.”

1. Mix the yeast, salt, sugar and olive oil with the water in a 5-qt bowl, or a lidded (not airtight) food container

2. Mix in the flour without kneading, using a large wooden spoon.

3. Cover (not airtight) and allow to rest at room temperature for about 2 hours. You can use the dough at this point, or refrigerate and use over next 12 days. If you refrigerate at least overnight, you’ll develop better flavor in the dough. If you only want to make 1 flatbread, just pinch off a grapefruit sized piece of dough to use…keep the remaining covered loosely in the refrigerator. You can freeze the dough as well…but I haven’t tried it, because honestly, it’s so good that the dough never goes unbaked for more than 4 days.

Pear and Gorgonzola Flatbread with Baby Arugula and Shaved Parmesan

If you have a pizza peel and a quick wrist, feel free to use that to shuffle the pizza into the oven. I’m not that coordinated – hand-eye coordination gene missing.. The key to great flatbreads to stretch the dough thin, a light hand in toppings and very fresh ingredients. It’s important to pre-heat your oven and your baking sheet – the hot baking sheet will help cook the dough faster. If you have a baking stone, the flatbreads will cook more evenly and faster.

Dust surface of dough with flour. Divide dough into 4 equal pieces. Stretch surface of dough on each side and tuck under, creating a round, ball with a taut surface. Flatten dough ball a little. Keep the dough covered until ready to use. If using cold, refrigerated No Knead Olive Oil dough (above), let the dough balls relax and warm up for 30 minutes on the counter before trying to roll or stretch out (it’s hard to stretch cold dough.) If using room-temp pizza dough, you may proceed to next step.

You’ll bake 2 at a time. Dust surface of dough and work surface with flour. with your hands, carefully stretch into a long, thin, oval shape, about 16″x 6″. The thinner you can get the dough without tearing, the better. You can use rolling pin (esp if your dough is still a little cold). If dough is difficult to stretch or roll, let it sit and relax for 10 minutes. Repeat with remaining. Cover loosely with towel.

20 minutes before you want to bake you’ll want to preheat your oven and your baking sheet. Crank up your oven to its highest setting (usually most ovens go up to 500F) and insert an inverted baking sheet.

Remove the hot baking sheet from oven and set your flatbreads on top, side by side. Work quickly and carefully. Brush surface with olive oil and layer pears and gorgonzola on top. Bake in oven for 7-10 minutes (keep your eye on the flatbread!) until top and bottom of flatbread is golden brown. Remove and repeat for remaining 2 flatbreads. Top with baby arugula and shaved parmesan.